Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
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Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
#2This whole question about the vision boils down to "humans don't need it so cars should not need it too" the problem with this statement is that humans does not have wheels to move around, they have legs, but wheels are ridiculously simple compared to 4 legs tapping 160km/h on a highway. Same for birds - they also does not need jet engines to fly around, but imagine Airbus A380 flapping its wings and what kind of complexity would you need to flap 800km/h through air.
Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
#3This whole question about the vision boils down to "humans don't need it so cars should not need it too" the problem with this statement is that humans does not have wheels to move around, they have legs, but wheels are ridiculously simple compared to 4 legs tapping 160km/h on a highway. Same for birds - they also does not need jet engines to fly around, but imagine Airbus A380 flapping its wings and what kind of com…
But the question at hand is system control, not locomotion! You're not asking the automation to walk (well, I mean someday we will, but Teslas have wheels), nor the aircraft to flap. We want the automation to do what a human pilot would do. And that works with eyes.
No, I think this argument is largely correct. And frankly settled: anyone who's driven recent FSD beta versions knows very well that the cars "see just fine". They don't hit anything, they see and avoid obstacles. Frankly they're much more observant than humans are, my car will twitch when pedestrians turn as if they're going to enter the road (where human drivers mostly don't notice, and if they do they ignore it). What problems still exist are in planning: things like sign reading, lane selection, etc... still need some work. But collision avoidance just isn't an issue. It isn't. The LIDAR folks were wrong, basically.
(I will admit though that I'm a little sad about the removal of the ultrasound sensors though. It's true the autonomy probably doesn't need them, but I really like having the chimes to guide parking and garage maneuvering.)
Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
#4So the key question is how much of an improvement does radar/sensors/etc give you over just using computer vision?
Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
#5This whole question about the vision boils down to "humans don't need it so cars should not need it too" the problem with this statement is that humans does not have wheels to move around, they have legs, but wheels are ridiculously simple compared to 4 legs tapping 160km/h on a highway. Same for birds - they also does not need jet engines to fly around, but imagine Airbus A380 flapping its wings and what kind of com…
More importantly, we have a tremendous data "engine" processing input from our senses. So assuming for a second that cameras match what our eyes can do, you still do not have a processing engine on the level of our brain to make sense of those inputs.
Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
#6This whole question about the vision boils down to "humans don't need it so cars should not need it too" the problem with this statement is that humans does not have wheels to move around, they have legs, but wheels are ridiculously simple compared to 4 legs tapping 160km/h on a highway. Same for birds - they also does not need jet engines to fly around, but imagine Airbus A380 flapping its wings and what kind of com…
But the question at hand is system control, not locomotion! You're not asking the automation to walk (well, I mean someday we will, but Teslas have wheels), nor the aircraft to flap. We want the automation to do what a human pilot would do. And that works with eyes. No, I think this argument is largely correct. And frankly settled: anyone who's driven recent FSD beta versions knows very well that the cars "see just f…
> The LIDAR folks were wrong, basically.
This is far, far from settled at this point.
Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
#7I think there's an interesting general optimisation problem here of balancing the accuracy/performance of a software/hardware system, against the goal of making that system easier to iterate on and develop.
Presumably this is a matter of working out if you are at a local maximum or not, and thinking about what properties the ideal solution will have. It also matters if you have other competitors that might be racing towards the ideal solution faster than you, potentially patenting their progress along the way.
Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
#8So the key question is how much of an improvement does radar/sensors/etc give you over just using computer vision?
If we're to trust what Elon and the team said during the last few AI day, none. They stated that the ultrasonic and radar sensors were actually performing worse than their pure vision stack.
Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
#9This whole question about the vision boils down to "humans don't need it so cars should not need it too" the problem with this statement is that humans does not have wheels to move around, they have legs, but wheels are ridiculously simple compared to 4 legs tapping 160km/h on a highway. Same for birds - they also does not need jet engines to fly around, but imagine Airbus A380 flapping its wings and what kind of com…
soooo... you're agreeeing that non-vision isn't necessary since the control domain is so much simpler?
I personally think they should use as much data inputs as possible: radar, IR, LIDAR, mesh networks, fixed route information.
Where tesla went particularly wrong IMO is ignoring some sort of route-based chunk information which is how humans navigate. IIRC Elon said something to the effect of just having an algorithm to work everywhere.
Humans use the basic algorithm "stay in lane, drive forward" and then decorate with signs, knowledge of curves, locations of potholes, dangerous low-viz corners, likelihood of surprise stopped traffic, obscured driveways, general character of neighborhoods, road purpose. Weather. Windy sections, icy sections, light availability anomalies. What type of vehicle. Repair state of vehicle.
A general AI algorithm will never be able to properly account for flavors/tags/chunk info on routes. Especially since cloud precomputation is so available these days.
Anyway, while recognizing that Tesla's "Fully Self Driving" is not as advertised, and we are a ways from self driving for any statistical measure of superiority to a healthy aware adult, it is still damn impressive what FSD vids show.
Do AI driving systems try to make "subsystems" of AI networks to reduce inputs to various higher-level inputs, or do other just throw a ton of inputs at a big ass network and just let the entire system rise from the soup of information?
Re: Why Tesla removed radar and ultrasonic sensors [video]
#10TL;DW.
Tesla doesn’t know how to do change management.